More education needed on asteroid threats

Thursday, 7 June 2012 Stuart GaryABC

According to the report the most immediate threats are smaller impactors capable of destroying a city or triggering a tsunami (Source: ESA/Space Situational Awareness - Near Earth Objects, P. Carrill.)

The report by Secure World Foundation, a scientific think tank, says an effective international communications and educational strategy needs to be developed explaining how an impact risk assessment is formulated.

The authors say there is also a need to communicate the uncertainty associated with such forecasts and explain them in non-scientific terms that reduce the risk of misinterpretation.

Impactor threats

They found the most immediate threats are not huge extinction level event asteroids, which are several kilometres across, but smaller impactors capable of destroying a city or triggering a tsunami.

The report gives the example of the 1908 Tunguska impact event in Siberia which flattened 80 million trees over an area of 2200 square kilometres. It is thought to have been caused by an asteroid only about 40 metres wide.

According to the report, these smaller near Earth objects, or NEOs, are likely to escape detection.

"Any advance warning might be on the scale of hours, and the response might require an evacuation similar to New Orleans as hurricane Katrina approached," the report says.

However the report warns there's no worldwide disaster-notification protocol, the closest analogy being the early warning system developed after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.